dis.

So going for the retreat broke my rhythm to create nicely-photoshopped posts to mark my countdown to turning 25. (Somewhat) an accurate story of my life — one that is always disrupted and inconsistent :S But here I'll share a short reflection from the retreat that I just went to, one aptly themed, "rest". And rest I did — lugging along my lappy, my Greek homework, my readings — and barely touching them at all heh. I spent the time sleeping, chatting, alone at the beachside with the Lord, playing this brilliant new (fine, it's new to me) card game called 'Citadels' with the new generation of Presby preachers/pastors who are altogether quite hilarious and a joy to be around. The rest of the hols were spent being rather sickly and sleeping, and in the speaker's words, rest could come in an enforced disruption from routine. So it did.

What was I to do again? Ah yes, reflections...

Reflections from the EP Presbytery Retreat 2012 

This retreat was a great time of rest (in all sense of the word) and also a timely reminder for me, especially since the Lord has been telling me lately that I need to cut down on “doing” and focus more on “being”. And through the speaker’s timely message, the “being” was to rest and be restored in God — spiritually. The retreat indeed gave me an enforced disruption from my routines and reinforced the Lord’s directions for me. 

“Lord, I may be tired from Your work, but let me never be tired of Your work.” 

A simple prayer that the speaker shared would also be mine today — being tired from God’s work is one which physical rest can help; yet being tired of God’s work is something that physical rest cannot remedy.

To avoid being tired of God’s work, Rev Dr David Wong offered a rather paradoxical perspective which I felt was refreshing: He shared that “rest” (spiritual) brings about “restoration”; we need to first work from a state of restedness.

This struck me because we often talk about doing God’s work from the angle of putting in constant effort and energies to speed the restoration of His kingdom. Rest is often thought of as physical, and not spiritual. It is rarely mentioned that we first need to be spiritually rested in God, and it is out of that rest that we serve Him.
So what is that ‘rest’?

Being spiritually rested was having singlemindedness towards God; being sincere in our intentions frees us from the burden and stress of having to ‘cover up’; generosity with regards to our possessions and not allowing them to possess us instead will also be one less snare to our toil. 

I thank God for having allowed me to attend this retreat as the message has given me a clear and applicable picture of how I was to go about being in that state of rest that God had instructed me. 

I will also fondly remember the closing words that Rev Dr Wong shared as he quoted Rev Edmund Chan on the ‘signs of restedness’, which also summed up his own sharing on restedness:

Nothing for us to prove to people (singlemindedness towards God);
Nothing to hide in what we say (sincerity);
Nothing to lose in what we possess (generosity). 

May the Lord help me.